In this study, I explored the impact of a community-wide intervention called “Beat the Street” on levels of mental wellbeing. Beat the Street turns a local area into a game and residents earn points as they walk, cycle, run or scoot around their community. Residents compete to see which schools, community groups and individuals can achieve the greatest physical activity over the course of the game period and highest scorers are rewarded with prizes. The results showed a statistically significant increase in mental wellbeing following the intervention, which was significantly greater for participants who were completely inactive before the game began.

These findings may be explained by the social nature of the intervention. First, the intervention operates at a community-wide level and is branded to the local area, in this instance, Stranraer, which may have functioned to connect people to their town. Second, the game relies on the competitive nature of teams (whether school or community group based) which could have functioned to strengthen existing social networks or enable individuals without connection to an existing social group to become a part of one (for instance, their child’s school, their workplace or a local charity). Finally, the intervention offered 20 local points of common interest, the ‘Beat Boxes’, and a common topic of conversation, the ‘game’. With 3371 people (38% of the population within the game boundary) recording 285,380 scans on just 20 Beat Boxes, it is highly likely that paths would have crossed on numerous occasions with familiar and unfamiliar neighbours and the game itself would have offered a convenient topic of discussion, such as what team people are a part of, how many points they have acquired and how many miles they have travelled.